From award-winning journalist and writer Rick Morton comes Mean Streak, the gripping, utterly compelling and horrifying story of how, over the course of four and a half years, Australia’s government turned on its most vulnerable citizens.

Robodebt was the automated debt recovery system, in which close to half a million Australian welfare recipients were illegally pursued over false debts. It was described by the Royal Commission’s report as a “massive failure of public administration” caused by “venality, incompetence and cowardice”. Essentially, Australia was gaslit by its own government. From ministers to public servants – they backed something that was illegal, just to shake down innocent people for money, then they lied about it for four and a half years.

In the tradition of Chloe Hooper (The Tall Man) and Helen Garner (This House of Grief and Joe Cinque’s Consolation), Rick Morton tells a powerful and emotionally compelling story of one of the most shocking, large-scale failures of the Australian government, a historic and appalling political tragedy, which clearly displayed the wide-reaching and systematic contempt that a government had for its most vulnerable citizens.

The saga of robodebt tells us deeply disturbing things about the country we are, the people we are, the bureaucrats we have (both good and bad) and the government that was. This is a powerfully moving, deeply compelling cautionary tale of morality in public life gone badly awry.